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What the membership number for the LSBs? How does this compare to last season?

Not sure TBH. I feel like we are about double from the people who hang with us in the stands at at watch parties but we also sold several memberships to people to people off-island who just want to be part of it.

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Does anyone follow the Croatian league closely? With David's Gent playing Rijeka this week I did a little looking into the team and was surprised to see that they only attract slightly over 4,000/game. Which is actually ahead of Dinamo Zagreb, who is by far their most successful club. For last season their league attendance was 4179 and including all competitions was 6344 (6 Champions league and 10 Europa League matches)

The Croatian league is a 10 team league and last season the average attendance was only 2732, nearly 2000 less than CPL currently attracts. In fact, in the last 10 seasons they have only broken the 3000 barrier 1 time. Meanwhile they produce superstar players and have one of the top national teams in the world.

Looking back at Zagreb, despite have a modest attendance their squad value is listed at 84 million and last season had a transfer income of +28 million.

Perhaps attendance shouldn't be the primary focus of success and we should look at player movement. If a team like Pacific can develop some of their young players than can actually be more sustainable than HFX or Valour and also be more beneficial in providing players for the national team. It will be interesting in the next 10+ years to analyze attendance figures as well as developmental trends.

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Canadian culture would need to start taking soccer an order of magnitude more seriously than hockey to replicate the sort of environment that Luka Modric grew up in. Rome wasn't built in a day basically.

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Does anyone follow the Croatian league closely? With David's Gent playing Rijeka this week I did a little looking into the team and was surprised to see that they only attract slightly over 4,000/game. Which is actually ahead of Dinamo Zagreb, who is by far their most successful club. For last season their league attendance was 4179 and including all competitions was 6344 (6 Champions league and 10 Europa League matches)

The Croatian league is a 10 team league and last season the average attendance was only 2732, nearly 2000 less than CPL currently attracts. In fact, in the last 10 seasons they have only broken the 3000 barrier 1 time. Meanwhile they produce superstar players and have one of the top national teams in the world.

Looking back at Zagreb, despite have a modest attendance their squad value is listed at 84 million and last season had a transfer income of +28 million.

Perhaps attendance shouldn't be the primary focus of success and we should look at player movement. If a team like Pacific can develop some of their young players than can actually be more sustainable than HFX or Valour and also be more beneficial in providing players for the national team. It will be interesting in the next 10+ years to analyze attendance figures as well as developmental trends.

Well you will find many soccer leagues around the world where soccer is the number 1 sport in those countries but whose domestic league attendances are not that much more than the CPL attendance . However, keep in mind that a lot of these countries don’t have to spend a good portion of their budget on travel and room and board. A lot of times in a lot of these countries a team travels to the game and then jumps on the bus and travels back home. No money spent on air travel, or getting a hotel for team and staff. A good chunk of a CPL budget will go into airfare and hotel rooms and even renting a bus to take the team from the airport to the stadium to the hotel. That’s a lot of money a CPL team will spend every year on this. Look at Uruguay their attendance for league games is not that much, but their budget for travel in league play would almost be nothing. For Canada hopefully we get enough teams where we can regionalize the schedule and cut down on so much of the budget spent on travel. The goal in the early years is survive and grow and hopefully solutions to all this money spent on travel will be found.

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WOW, soccer culture vastly superior to ours, churning out world class talent.......and no one actually goes to watch the games. Zagreb is bigger than WPG, with this great culture, world class players and we blow their doors off in our first season. I sure feel a lot better about CPL attendance. Our economics might be sketchy but there is nothing wrong with the support the teams are getting.

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To be fair, Zagreb has another two teams in the top tier and 4 or 5 in the second tier. It's not an apples to apples comparison. But attendance wise CPL absolutely deserves to hold its head high.

Yeah its not fair, they have world class soccer and such great culture. If we compare it to hockey here where we have the culture advantage, the jets will draw 15500, moose will draw 5000, and how many lower league clubs are in WPG?? I'm kind of sick of defering to other countires and slagging canada. All the jokes about York 9 etc, they are still drawing over 2000. WPg/Halifax etc are not soccer towns, but they still put more asses in the seats than big name teams from big european divisions with world class players.

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Well you will find many soccer leagues around the world where soccer is the number 1 sport in those countries but whose domestic league attendances are not that much more than the CPL attendance . However, keep in mind that a lot of these countries don’t have to spend a good portion of their budget on travel and room and board. A lot of times in a lot of these countries a team travels to the game and then jumps on the bus and travels back home. No money spent on air travel, or getting a hotel for team and staff. A good chunk of a CPL budget will go into airfare and hotel rooms and even renting a bus to take the team from the airport to the stadium to the hotel. That’s a lot of money a CPL team will spend every year on this. Look at Uruguay their attendance for league games is not that much, but their budget for travel in league play would almost be nothing. For Canada hopefully we get enough teams where we can regionalize the schedule and cut down on so much of the budget spent on travel. The goal in the early years is survive and grow and hopefully solutions to all this money spent on travel will be found.

I think you hit on a great point. Canada is a massive county geographically. Makes travel much more difficult for the clubs financially with expenses. Cant really compare it with European leagues. Also in many of the Euro leagues soccer is the #1 sport and will attract a bunch of corporate investment and media coverage. In Canada our league has virtually no coverage on any of the major sports casts.

I think if CPL has aspirations of being a fully pro nationwide league you would need a bare minimum of 4000 a game to even have a kick at the can. The good news is pretty well every club seems to be in reach of a number like this. On the other hand some clubs still have some work to do.

Very early days however I think we can say that so far we have a decent base of support especially in Hamilton, Winnipeg and Halifax. The challenge will be to build on what was accomplished this year. Making adjustments (I think some clubs really need to adjust their pricing) to offset what did not work in year 1 will be critical.

All in all I would say the league is off to a decent start - however to make it viable I would say we will have to make improvements and grow the fan base over time if we are being realistic.

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To be fair, Zagreb has another two teams in the top tier and 4 or 5 in the second tier...

Maybe, but Dinamo is by far the most supported there. The big problem from what I've been told over the years is that most people in Zagreb only really take Hajduk Split seriously as an opponent because of the legacy of the old Yugoslav league when it was usually those two as title challengers at the top with Partizan and Red Star from Belgrade with maybe Rijeka and Osijek as other Croatian teams but only as also rans, so big crowds will still show up sometimes for Hajduk or big European competition games but not so many the rest of the time.

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Its cart and horse or more so chicken and egg. More exposure through a TV deal means more interest in the brand and likely higher attendance.

Much like some players and potential ownerships some potential fans are waiting out to see if the league is for real and sustainable imo.

I think the longer clubs are around and if the on/off field product and matchday experience is there crowds will grow. Likewise the importance of constant outreach in and around the community will earn a following and loyalship.

The league still isnt that visible imo. I know plenty and as recent as last week of sports fans that still had no idea about the league.

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That seems accurate to me. It was a really good crowd. Given that the beer garden was pretty full, I would be thought close to 5k. I'm not sure I've heard the capacity with the new stand but it must be over 6k.

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That seems accurate to me. It was a really good crowd. Given that the beer garden was pretty full, I would be thought close to 5k. I'm not sure I've heard the capacity with the new stand but it must be over 6k.

Yeah, I was a little disappointed TBH. I thought we would hit 5,000.

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Short answer is no, but the speculative answer is that FCE have had a reputation over the years for not papering the house and providing the unvarnished reality of the situation with their attendance stats. Their longevity in an NASL context with numbers like this means that it shouldn't be a cause for panic in a CanPL context.

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If there were 6800+ in the actual seats it would. Unlike in Winnipeg, it never looks quite full enough to me in the highlights to match the announced numbers or what you would expect based on ticketmaster where there are usually very few blue dots:

Regardless of what the announced numbers suggest I suspect Halifax and Winnipeg are ahead of Hamilton on actual attendance. Those two are providing plenty of reasons to believe it can work overall, so the league is doing OK as long as it doesn't take more than a couple more years max to get some expansion happening.